The campsite features 24-hour security. Organizers conduct warrant and convicted sex offender checks on potential Tent City 4 residents, and do not admit offenders. The camp bans alcohol, drugs and guns from the premises.

Easter said she lost her job at a Seattle medical center and then totaled her car in less than a year. The setbacks left her unable to afford rent and other bills.

The story is common among Tent City 4 residents, especially as the economy continues a feeble recovery.

“There but for the grace of God go I,” Bennett said. “It could be me.”

Tent City 4 residents also educate the congregations and neighbors at the host sites.

“What we learn is that people are people — and all people are God’s children,” said the Rev. Keith Madsen, Community Church of Issaquah pastor. “These are people who have something to offer. We can care about them and we can learn from them.”

Tent City 4 roams among Eastside religious institutions every 90 days. The encampment is due to depart Issaquah on Jan. 21.

“It makes people aware that there is a homelessness issue on the Eastside,” Robin Plotnik, Temple B’nai Torah immediate past president and a Redmond resident, said before the Tent City 4 departure.

The visit and the holiest days in Judaism, or the High Holy Days, coincided.

Tent City 4 offered Temple B’nai Torah members a hands-on lesson in tzedakah — or charity — as congregants collected supplies for Tent City 4 and rabbi built a discussion based on camp residents’ comments.

“It really makes it a more human interaction to homelessness,” Plotnik said. “People have names and stories and lives. We get to really know them. We sit down and have meals with them. It’s a good education piece.”

Temple B’nai Torah administrators and congregants understood the logistics more, because the encampment stopped at the temple in 2005 and 2008. Neighbors also paid little attention to the encampment on the latest visit.

“The neighborhood was apparently really accepting or it was a nonevent,” Plotnik said.

The most common questions from Tent City 4 neighbors address concerns about crime. Organizers in Issaquah heard few questions from neighbors before the return.

“I think it, maybe, even gets people to start thinking about more permanent solutions and the broader issues of how we, as a society, deal with some of the more uncomfortable issues and how to help people who are having a hard time getting through life,” Plotnik said.